Benchmarked: Snapdragon S4 Pro (Optimus G) vs Exynos 4412 (Galaxy S3)

LG is proud of its newest flagship device, but is it worth all the praise that people have been giving it? Should we judge the LG Optimus G F180K by its specs? Of course not.

We put this beast through a series of benchmark tests to see how it fares against one of the major players in the high-end smartphone arena, the Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300. How does the Optimus G stack up against one of the reigning Android smartphone kings?

Let’s find out by putting both processors through a battery of benchmark tests. (You may also skip forward to this article’s video version.)

Systems-on-a-Chip

The Samsung Galaxy S3 is equipped with the Samsung Exynos 4412 processor, which consists of a 1.4 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and ARM Mali-400 MP4 GPU.

The LG Optimus G, on the other hand, has a Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset that packs a 1.5 GHz quad-core Krait CPU and Adreno 320 GPU.

Both of these systems were put to the test in a series of benchmark tests.

The Tests

The first set is comprised of benchmarks that measure overall performance, such as the CPU, 2D and 3D display, and SD card reading speed. The second set measures the CPU processing power of both processors. This set also measures how fast a processor can compute a simple engineering equation. The third set measures the GPU of both processors. Lastly, the final set measures web browser performance.

Although these benchmarks results may give you a final score for processor performance, the results are still not 100% accurate and may vary from time to time. All the results here are purely estimated. It is impossible to produce a single number that will give a 100% accurate result from each benchmark test.

To ensure the integrity of benchmark results, both phones were wiped clean, were running the stock ROMs that they came out of the box with, and were running the default settings/configurations. No extra apps were installed; only the required benchmark apps were installed on both phones. All battery saving options that limited or boosted the performance of the phones were also turned off.

Overall Processor Performance

Quadrant scores had the Snapdragon S4 Pro leading the Exynos 4412 by 781 points. This suggests that the Qualcomm chip has better overall performance, according to the Quadrant benchmark.

AnTuTu Benchmark has a similar finding: the Snapdragon chipset is snappier.

Even CF-Bench concurs: the Snapdragon indeed has better overall performance than the Exynos.

LG Optimus G’s Snapdragon S4 Pro processor clearly wins this round. Samsung’s Exynos 4412 did well, too, with only about 1,000 points behind LG’s score. But, as has been said earlier, these results should be taken with a grain of salt.

CPU Benchmarks

Here, we measure the the performance of the CPU subsystem of both processors. Geekbench 2 and Vellamo Mobile Benchmark Metal focus more on CPU and memory performance. Linpack for Android measures how fast a CPU computes a system of linear equations.

The Snapdragon S4 Pro processor got higher scores in Geekbench 2, Linpack for Android Single Thread, and Linpack for Android Muti-thread. In Vellamo Mobile Benchmark Metal, it was a close fight between the two, with Samsung’s Exynos 4412 processor scoring 15 points higher than Qualcomm’s.

Graphics Processor Benchmark

For hardcore gamers, you will be pleased with the performance of both these processors. The Snapdragon S4 Pro processor did very well in the GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt HD C24Z16 Onscreen and Offscreen tests. Although the Exynos 4412 scored lower in these tests, it did maintain its 15 fps score in both Onscreen and Offscreen tests.

NenaMark 1 and NenaMark 2 also yielded the same results with only a 0.1 fps difference in the Exynos’ Nenamark 2 score.

The Snapdragon S4 Pro processor also scored higher in the An3DBench XL benchmark.

Browser Benchmarks

This part of the tests yielded varying results. Testing the JavaScript language on the stock browser with SunSpider gives better results on the Snapdragon S4 Pro. Similar results occurred in the Vellamo Mobile Benchmark HTML5 test: the Snapdragon S4 Pro fared better.

However, using the set of JavaScript benchmarks of the Google V8 Benchmark Suite points to Samsung Exynos 4412 as the winner. For overall browser performance, Rightware Browsermark finds the Exynos 4412 much better, with a score 79,430 points higher than the Snapdragon’s.

Video

If you want to see these benchmarks in action, check out our YouTube video below:

Conclusion

Qualcomm did a good job in creating a fiery beast. Based on the benchmark test results, the Snapdragon S4 Pro blew its fiery flames on Samsung’s Exynos 4412. The Snapdragon S4 Pro did pretty well in overall processor performance and CPU computing speed.

The Samsung Exynos 4412 also did very well during the benchmark test. The processor did yield good scores and came very close to topping Qualcomm’s scores. The Exynos 4412, however, did exceptionally well during in browser benchmark test.

Both processors got nearly even scores in the graphics benchmark tests.

As mentioned earlier, these benchmarks are just an estimation and cannot accurately measure the performance of a device.

Which phone and processor is the king of your hill? Is it the fiery Snapdragon S4 Pro or the nearly-as-fiery Samsung Exynos 4412 processor? Share your thoughts by voting in the poll and sounding off in the comments.

(with contributions from Alvin Ybañez and Dan Evans)

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